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Monday Media Scoop: Functional training—what it is and why you need it

September 12th, 2011

If you’re like most, understanding fitness vocabulary can be difficult to say the least. Phrases start to roll together, become ambiguous and sometimes downright confusing. To help you understand some of this jibber jabber, we’re going to tackle a prominent term that has shaped the fitness industry and most likely your own workout routine, functional training.

What exactly is functional training and what does it mean, is probably one of the first questions you may ask yourself upon hearing this widely used term. At its most basic level, functional training is training for everyday movement and activity that involves multi-planar, multi-joint and multi-muscle exercises that mimic real life activity, according to Angie Miller’s article in the July/August American Fitness Journal.

Functional training challenges your body and mind to use your muscles as an integrated whole, as opposed to focusing on one singular movement at a time, to achieve efficient movements that train your body and mind to work together. In doing so, you can better prepare your body to prevent itself from injury when the unexpected slip, fall or twist happens.

Why should you use and incorporate functional training? Lets let the National Academy of Sports Medicine, Elements of Personal Fitness Training textbook answer that question.

“Today, more people work in offices, have longer work hours, use better technology…and are required to move less…this produces more inactive and nonfunctional people and leads to dysfunction and increased incidents of injury…An integrated approach should be used to create safe programs that consider functional ability for each individual person.”

In sum, functional training prepares your body to handle anything that may be thrown at it. There are a million ways to implement functional training tactics, and using our SandBells and SteelBells are undoubtedly some of the best tools to work with.

The shifting weight in the Sand and SteelBells provides a constant challenge to your grip, hand and arm muscles. Exercising with either product works your core and stability muscles in a whole new way because the active movement inside the Bells causes your body to work and adapt to stay in control of your movements. The Sand and SteelBells also make functional training fun, especially when used in circuits or partner work. Visit our website to purchase your own and start your functional training TODAY!